


Torment

by LelianasSong



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Gen, Headcanon, In Hushed Whispers, Not particularly graphic but painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:31:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LelianasSong/pseuds/LelianasSong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leliana dare not close her eyes within her time as a prisoner of the Elder One, not when long dead friends continue to haunt her. A small drabble based upon Leliana's thoughts in Redcliffe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torment

If she closed her eyes, she could forget. She could drown out the screams and the strangled breaths, the sobs and the scrabbling. That is what she told herself anyway. When she tried it, she wanted nothing more than for it to be true, for the fortress of her mind to offer safety and refuge.

But when had things ever been so simple?

Her mind was not a fortress to keep the pain out, but a prison that locked her in. Memories and pain seeped into every nook and cranny of her mind, the horror of it all aching in her chest.

"Why do you not look at me, Leliana?" Her Warden asks, ice blue eyes wide and imploring. "Do you no longer love me? I came back for you. I came back to save you!"

The voice is strained and those eyes are watering, rivers of tears flowing down pale cheeks. The tears do not remain water in her mind however, as they twist and darken, a sickly sea of blood escaping like flames burning down a path.

"I am right here with you," her Cousland whispers, attempting to latch onto her with skeletal hands, "why won't you acknowledge me?"

Still Leliana says nothing, her gut twisting, threatening to make her ill. Her eyes will not close, forcing her to stare in horror as her love's skin is sunken before her very eyes. Scars open into gashes and feeble skin purples and blues under some unseen force.

"Leliana, why do you ignore us? We are only here because we care for you!"

The new voice, lilting in its familiar Antivan tones, appears before the figure does. Gold satin and blue silk is ripped and torn, stained with blood and so far from the grace it had once exuded.

They stand before her, hands linked as they reach forward towards Leliana. Their fingers felt like claws, catching onto her armour and gripping on, tearing at her, grasping for her. She takes a step back, the terror seeping in as Josephine's skin becomes as taut as Cousland's. Her eyes losing all light within until they are nothing but hollow and empty and dead.

Dead.

Leliana's eyes snapped open, scanning quick and panicked around the darkened room before her.

"Leliana, please look at us!" The voices echo in her mind, restless and determined. "We need you, please."

Staring ahead, she refuses the voices, which only make them angrier. Screeching and yelling in ways that are almost too inhuman to be the people they say they are. They are feral and they demand in ways that her love and Josephine never would. They claw like animals in her mind, tearing until she is certain that she will become like them. Blood and screams and rage.

"This is your fault!"

The words are a hiss and are unmistakably her Warden. They stab at her chest with the truth of them. Had it not been for her, they would surely have not been here. Her Warden would not have travelled so far to fight at her side, her friend would not have come to work for the Inquisition and the Herald... she may not have died all that time before, had she not insisted upon their aid of the mages.

This was all her fault. She should have been quicker, smarter, wiser. If she had just done what needed to have been done, then they would not be here, strung up in the dungeons of Redcliffe.

"Why won't you look at me?!" Elsa Cousland screeches, desperation within her weak voice, scratching at her throat.

"Because I cannot bear to!"

She turns her head wildly as much as she can, her voice rasping and hoarse from hours of dehydration and screaming. Her eyes are open and she cannot close them in time. She cannot block out the sight before her very eyes.

The remains of Elsa and Josephine hung from the ceiling, their bodies little more than skeletons with pieces of ripped fabric. The only identifiers for their past selves. Leliana could almost pretend that they were fakes. Almost. Her memory still held their initial images, of bodies broken and Leliana's heart ripped into shreds at the sight.

The lock clicks and she turns forward, staring defiantly at the door. Perhaps this would be the day that she was no longer useful to the Elder One and the Venatori. Her time for peace had surely come. She just wished that she could be released, to find herself with her loved ones once more. There was little hope after all for all of this to change. For Corypheus to be slaughtered, defeated. She had once believed in miracles but her death was far more likely than the Inquisitor walking through that door.

She could not close her eyes as the torment continued. Pain after wave of pain. It was something she knew well and the rage at that fact bubbled inside of her, threatening to explode. The voices were replaced by her own screams, her torment being replaced with another. Time after time. As she was certain they had wanted.

The next time the door opens, Leliana almost believes that she has closed her eyes and that her mind is playing tricks on her again. It cannot be... but the torturer sees them too and turns. A moment of weakness, a golden opportunity and soon the man is dead, his neck broken between her thighs in one last moment of anger and rage.

She sags as she sees Trevelyan run to her side, her eyes wide and full of concern as she releases Leliana from her physical shackles. How dare she come now? How could she have been gone for so long whilst they all needed her? While Leliana had needed her!

The anger builds only as the Tevinter speaks, so callous, as if her life had not been fire and brimstone and blood. As if this was all just a game to him.

It was clearly not a game to the Herald, whose eyes had landed upon the tormentors of Leliana's hours. A stiffness in her spine, her skin paled and an understanding flashed; it was almost as if Trevelyan herself loathed to hear the way Dorian was writing off their reality so easily.

"Is that...?" She asks, her voice faltering as she gazes up towards them.

"Yes."

"I... I failed you..." the words whispered, echoing the ones that had been so constant in Leliana's own mind. "I cannot assuage your pain, but I will make certain that this is not the end. I will make them all pay for what has happened here. This I swear."

"Good. You had better."

Nodding, the Herald turns, hands clenched around her staff and her stride exuding the anger that had become Leliana's life. She closed her eyes then, the images of Elsa and Josephine still firmly etched into her mind. And yet now, their snarls are smiles, as if they know what is going to happen. Light blooms from behind them, as though hope was fighting against the darkness.

Closing her eyes had not worked, she could never unsee the horrors that she had seen. But somehow, someway, there was a chance. Her past may never have to see this, her future may not have to be so bleak.

It would not fix anything that she had seen, it would not change who she had become, but somewhere there was a woman who still held hope in her heart. She could feel it as she followed the Herald through the tormenting walls of her horrors; perhaps when that woman closed her eyes, she would never have to see what she saw.

Leliana would do it for her. It was a small hope, but she knew that she would give her life to see this through.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I hope I have adequate warning... if you think I need to tag anything else, please let me know as I know this is perhaps not the easiest of topics to read. I know I had a lot of trouble writing it. Anyway, I thought I needed to write some angst and this is what happened. If you liked it, please leave a comment? It would make my day.


End file.
